SHOUT - Adopted by Lin Manuel Miranda

COMIDA CON MIRANDA

I have never understood what the upper-middle class enjoys about going out to dinner. The Mirandas have enough money to buy a four year scholarship to every culinary school in the United States, but no. They call up each family member within a 100 mile radius and drag us to a seedy Mexican restaurant in the heart of Washington Heights.

Restaurants were probably invented by the same guys who came up with faculty rooms or group homes. Each were made for lazy Precious Babies who can't handle something they should, like food or jobs or children. The subway is so crowded that Sebastian sits on my lap and Lin hangs on to the molding on the doors. I lock my arms around Sebastian's waist and rest my chin on his head. My hands are etched with cuts and scars and faded mehndi. They look like something rotting.

Downtown Washington Heights is the grand daddy of destructive interference. There's Patois being spoken on one side of me, Spanish on the other. Music blasts from each open window and street drummers jam out beneath awnings and storefronts. Lin twirls Vanessa beneath his arm as we pass an acoustic guitarist outside a bodega with barred windows. Sebastian grabs my hand and wiggles to the beat. I bite my lip and squeeze past the crowd. Some part of me wants to crane my neck and search for something, anything Pakistani: a sari or mehndi or a few words in Urdu, a jewel in this wasteland of different.

"Hurry up, Viddie!" Sebastian pulls me along. Everyone else has walked ahead. "C'mon, c'mon!"

The restaurant is called CDMX. Upon entering, we're greeted by a mustached man in a festive sombrero. Our placemats are woven with rainbow yarn. Sebastian asks if I'm okay. Luz asks the same thing. I nod and try to smile. When the waitress comes to take our order, everyone reads from the menu and grins like it's easy. When it's my turn, I say I'll get whatever Sebastian got.

My family never went to restaurants. My Mother loved to cook. She and Radhika made dinner each night, I remember the sounds of spoons and bowls, how incredible it seemed that they could create meals out of ingredients, how badly I wanted to help—

"Vidya!"

Vanessa snaps her fingers in front of my face. I flinch in my seat. "What?"

"Abuela asked you a question."

I turn to Luz. She wraps her hand around her wrist, like a bracelet. "Are the drawings like this?"

"Huh?"

Lin leans across the table. "She thinks your mehndi is removable, like a piece of jewelry, or something."

I shift in my seat. "Oh. No, it's drawn. like, paste, I mean..."

Sebastian makes an origami fortune teller out of his napkin. Luz gasps and marvels his handiwork while I dig tiny grooves in my skin with my thumbnail.

Lin's laugh snaps me out of my brainfog. You could hear it from miles away. "I swear, I can't wait to go back. I'll get so many flashbacks from high school."

"Maybe we can go this summer," says Vanessa.

The word go shifts gears in my brain. "Go where?"

Conversation stops. Everyone stares me dead in the face.

Sebastian grins and waves his hands in the air. "Puer-r-r-r-to R-r-r-ico!"

He rolls his R's perfectly. I slump in my chair. "Why the hell would we go there?"

Vanessa gives me her warning stare. "Language, Vidya."

"Because it's an amazing place." Lin rests his chin in his palm. "Have you seen Abuelo's photo albums? They're full of photos from Vega Alta-- I think there's some of Mayaguez--"

I slump lower in my chair. Sebastian folds his napkin into a little boat. The Mirandas could sail down to Puerto Rico in Sebastian's paper vessel. The waters are too rough around Pakistan. Lin yaps on about San Juan and the glorious, precious people of Puerto Rico. The Indian Sea: much too rough. Can't sail there, that's for sure. The only way to Pakistan is by flight—

"...San Juan...the beaches at sunset... food like no other..."

—But what about the tickets? The cost? The foster family I'm leaving behind? The strangers I have to face?

"...And the trip is planned for this Summer." Lin turns to me. "What do you say, Vidya?"

I look up from my lap. The Mirandas wait with unsure smiles. Sebastian takes another napkin and folds it into a paper airplane. What if my airplane to Pakistan flies so high, the sky cracks and falls? I bite my lip. Lin's smile falters, and Vanessa clears her throat, and Sebastian yanks his arm backward to throw his plane. It does a loop in the air beneath his chin and flops limp to the table.

How could I say no?

-

When we finish our meals, Lin and Luis argue over who gets to pay the bill. They both insist, so they end up splitting the cost between the two of them. Sebastian brings his oragami napkins with him when we leave. Outside, the street seems to rush past me. Has the city really grown so much? Or is it me? Have I been standing so still, I haven't noticed the velocity of the world around me?

The music still plays. The Mirandas still smile. I didn't know people smiled in March.

The subway ride back to Washington Point lasts ten minutes. The car is packed. Sebastian sits on Vanessa's lap. Lin rests his head on Luz's shoulder. I sit opposite them, next to an old man wearing six gold chains around his neck. At one point Sebastian thrusts his paper airplane out toward me and whines for me to come sit with him. Lin scoots over and pats the space next to him. I turn away and lean my forehead against the window.

Sebastian's airplane reminds me of something I haven't thought about in a long, long time. When I was in Pakistan, Radhika, Nayim and I used to fly kites. They were homemade, made from colorful patches of stolen fabric with tails made of feathers. Measured against the sun, they looked like birds. We took off our shoes and ran. We took turns holding the spar and followed each other through the rocky field, sun in our eyes, empty heads, hair blowing with the current of the wind. We flew.

Nayim and I made another kite. After we left Pakistan, after Radhika was married. We taped together a few patches of lightweight paper and used a spool of thread for the string and the spar. One day in the fall I started fourth grade, we walked to the park to test it out. Nayim held the spar. He untangled the thread we took off at the speed of light. The kite did a few loops in the wind before going up, then down, then up again— wind in our hair, bare feet crunching the leaves— up again, down again, then down, down, down, to the ground. He kept running. I waited to fly, but my engine sputtered. I tilted my head up to search for the colors, but the kite was dragging against the grass. I saw something though. There was a bird flying above us, a plane taking off in the distance behind it. The way the bird flapped its wings made me think it was young, just out of its nest. I watched it soar. Even after Nayim stopped running, I followed it. I thought about how funny it was that we had to go through all that trouble to tape together the paper and connect the thread to the tape, or how engineers spent years studying to fabricate airplanes when there were animals born to fly like that naturally. I thought about how there are certain things that are done by nature, and how although not everyone is capable of flying, we all help each other, in some way. We hold each other up in the air.

I was, what, eight? But I think Sebastian would like that story. I slump against the subway seat. Maybe I'll tell him about it, one day, if I can get the words out.